


Downtime

by Molly



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-03
Updated: 2011-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 13:16:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike leavetime.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Downtime

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Greensilver's J/D ficathon.

He had an office of his own, but he didn't like it much. It was too far out of the way. He had to follow a blue line until it hit a yellow line, and then branch off to an orange line. Then there was the first elevator trip, and a green line, and then the second elevator and a red line. Then there was the armory. Five miles of dank and twisted corridor after that was Jack's office. It was always cold in there, and one of the walls seemed to have a vein of some kind of ore running through it. It wasn't even concrete; that wall was solid mountain. Hammond said it was supposed to be decorative. Jack was pretty sure he was being punished.

Daniel's office used to be next door, back when the gate program was young and not so many alien artifacts had tried to kill them or blow them up. The revised plan took into account the fact that Daniel had to be close to the artifacts they brought back if he was going to study them, and sometimes the artifacts had to be sent back where they came from. Sometimes they had to be sent back _really fast._ So now Daniel had an office by the elevator on 18 and a lab right next to the gate room, and Jack was all alone at the center of the planet.

Carter's office, now, that was in a great location. Right between the officer's mess and the gym. There were other available offices nearby, but nobody really wanted them. Sounds came out of Carter's office, sounds Jack didn't like to think about. He'd considered moving up next to her to be closer to the rest of his team, but too much of the stuff Carter worked with tended to explode. It was a lot safer down in the basement, and down there, nobody cared how loud he played his stereo.

He passed Carter's office without knocking, and tried not to think about the weird blue glow seeping out around the edges of the door. He passed Daniel's lab, noting the hand-written _Gone Fishing_ sign with a grin. Four exclamation points. He wondered if that actually worked.

It was the gateroom Jack was interested in, though, so he continued on. Warning lights flashed above every doorway and alarm klaxons screamed around every corner. He swiped his card through the reader. His presence wasn't strictly required just because there was a general base emergency -- he'd never get any sleep if he had to show up every time the alarms went off, and besides that, he was technically on leave -- but he'd already been heading in that general direction. And then, of course, there was always the hope it might be one of their intergalactic space pals come to offer the fruits of all their knowledge.

As if.

The door slid open on three rows of baby soldiers with automatic weapons, an activated gate, and an alien. It was green, with huge black eyes like twin hockey pucks, and seemed to be made up mostly of iridescent slime. Behind it, the iris was closed. Hammond, his face red and his eyebrows drawn fiercely together, was gesturing in a manner not indicative of patience and trying to talk to... whatever the thing was.

Jack nudged aside one of the few, the proud, and went to stand next to Hammond.

"General."

"Jack, I'm glad you're here. As you can see, we have a visitor." Hammond had something green on his hand; he was trying to get it off without looking disgusted or stupid. He wasn't having any luck with any of it.

"Hi." Jack smiled his most charming smile and hoped it wouldn't be mistaken for aggression. "Jack O'Neill, Colonel, United States Air Force. And you would be...?"

It let out a long, low-pitched moan, and changed colors. Now it was a really big blue alien covered with iridescent slime. It reached out toward Jack with long, shiny fingers, and Jack immediately saw the source of Hammond's troubles. He shoved his hands firmly into his pockets. "Oh, I don't think so."

"It was purple when it got here," Hammond said.

"How...exactly...did it get here in the first place, sir?"

"Look at its wrist."

Jack looked, and blinked. "Oh," he said. "Oh, that can't be good."

"No, Colonel," Hammond said dryly. "I don't believe it is."

The last time Jack had seen one of those it had been wrapped around one of Narim's wrists. And the last time he'd seen Narim, they'd both been dodging fire from a Goa'uld attack on Tollana. After that last transmission they hadn't heard a peep from the Tollan, and when they tried to dial the Tollan number, the seventh chevron wouldn't lock. That was almost never a good sign. One of those matter-phase-out-destabilizer jobs on the wrist of a slimy color-changing alien with Earth's gate coordinates was probably more bad news.

"Nice bracelet," he said, nodding at the creature. "Doesn't really go with the rest of the outfit."

The thing made another low sound, longer this time, with an upswing at the end. When it was done, it was orange.

"Riiiight." Jack turned to Hammond. "So. Where's Daniel?"

"He's on leave."

"Well, yeah, who isn't, but..." Jack waved at the alien and raised his eyebrows.

"He hasn't answered our pages yet and there's no answer at his apartment. As far as we know, he's not on base."

"Ahhh." So the sign did work. "And his band of merry men?"

"Michaelson's in ICU with some kind of strange bug bite he picked up on Illana. He claims he's started hearing colors. Jones is on leave with her new husband. Morris said he'd be in as soon as he could, but he's got to either find a babysitter or get his four-year-old niece top-secret security clearance."

"How many languages does she speak?" Hammond gave him a look. "Okay, okay. Forget I asked."

Hammond said, "Maybe you should--"

"Find Daniel, sir?"

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble, Colonel."

Jack gestured at one of the heavily armed men behind him. Green eyes, freckles, scar over the cheekbone..."Travis."

"Yes, sir!"

Jack winced, and rubbed his ear. "Yeah. Listen, why don't you scamper on over to Dr. Jackson's lab and bring him back here for me? Take the gun with you, you might need it."

"Yes, sir!" Face that had never seen a razor, and a near-fanatical light of joyous discipline in his eyes. Jack had never been that young.

"Bust the door down if you have to."

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

"Hey, Travis?"

"Sir!"

"Bring him back _alive_ , okay?"

  


  


* * *

  


  


"So, what've you got?" Jack leaned into the doorway, Carter and Teal'c behind him. "It's been over an hour. You don't call, you don't write..."

Daniel looked at Jack with no expression, the flicker of his eyes Jack's only clue that Daniel found him at all amusing. At least, Jack hoped that was what that look meant. That was how he'd been reading it for years, and Daniel would have said something by now if he was getting it wrong.

"Jack."

"Daniel."

"How's your leave going?"

"Great, great." Jack glanced over at their new friend, then back to Daniel. "And yours?"

"Great. Catching up on some journals, sleeping in, sunbathing. The usual."

Jack nodded solemnly. "I noticed the tan."

That look again, and half of a grin that made Jack's chest feel ridiculously light. Nah, he wasn't getting it wrong.

With a shake of his head, Daniel got down to business. He spread a sheet of paper out on the table in front of him. Jack, Carter, and Teal'c moved into the room and leaned over to read the page. The alien leaned over too.

"That's not English." Carter looked skeptically at the alien. "Did...he...write that?"

"Hairy," Jack said, losing interest in the page. Lines, dots, who cared. As long as Daniel knew what it said, Jack was good. He looked up when the silence stretched out.

Everyone was looking at him. "What? I've been calling him Hairy."

"I suppose we have to call him something, sir."

Good old Carter. Jack gave her his warmest smile.

"Right." Daniel rolled his eyes and focused again on the paper in front of him. "Well, I can tell you that not all of the Tollan were destroyed in Tanith's attack." His eyes flicked up to meet Sam's, and his face softened. "Narim made it out with a ship and approximately two hundred refugees. He's alive."

Jack grinned, and looked away from Carter before he could embarrass her or be permanently blinded by her smile. He caught Daniel doing the same thing. They traded a glance, then Jack looked over at Teal'c. Teal'c was focused on Hairy.

Hairy was focused on Carter with its big black liquid eyes. It moaned softly, gestured at her with both arms, and turned bright yellow.

"Daniel...?"

"What?"

Jack sighed, and appealed to the ceiling for sympathy. "What is he _saying_ , Daniel."

Daniel looked at Hairy and raised his eyebrows. He looked back at Jack and blinked. "I have no idea."

"You have...excuse me?"

Daniel pushed his glasses up again and looked critically at the alien. "Well, the gesturing could possibly be part of a system of sign language, I suppose, and if that's the case, the vocalizations may serve as either emphasis or enhancements for that. I don't have a clue about the colors. That could just be a biological thing, like protective camouflage. Though, it is kind of...bright...for that--"

"Daniel!"

"Hmmm?"

"Narim? Refugees?"

"What? Oh! Right. Sorry." He picked up the page he'd smoothed out and offered it to Jack without taking his eyes off the alien. "There was a note."

"You couldn't have mentioned this up front?"

"You didn't ask."

Jack glared. It had about as much effect as it usually did, which was to say, none. He snatched the note out of Daniel's hand.

Still just lines and dots. There was a trace of blue slime on it he hadn't noticed before.

"When I took off its matter-phase device, I found this taped inside the band."

"A note..." Carter took the page away from Jack and looked at it. Her eyes skated down the page quickly. The crease between her eyebrows got deeper, until Daniel reached out and rotated the page a hundred-eighty degrees. She smiled and handed the note back. "What does it say?"

"'Escaped in small ship with 200 refugees, I am fine, Schroedinger is fine, alien is primitive but friendly, please send supplies and medical assistance with alien through stargate to these coordinates...' etc., etc." Daniel trailed off and pushed his glasses higher on his nose.

"Now wait a minute." Jack looked suspiciously at Hairy. "How do we know that note didn't come straight from Tanith? That sneaky son of a bitch is not above playing off our loyalty. He could be luring us out to some God-forsaken rock with this sob story, just waiting to pick us off one by one as we go through the gate. It'd be like shooting fish in a barrel."

"I really don't think Tanith would have mentioned the cat, Jack."

Jack paused, and tilted his head. "Okay, that's fair."

"There's a gate address." Daniel tossed the page down on the table and sighed.

Jack glanced at Carter, who was still glowing, then back at Daniel, who looked a little bit pissed off. He leaned in, a completely justified self-indulgence that didn't cost anybody anything, and put a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "What?"

Daniel's mouth tightened on one side, not quite a smile. "'Primitive but friendly.'" He waved a hand at Hairy and caught Jack's eyes. "That's probably how Narim described us to _him_."

  


  


* * *

  


  


The MALP had sent back nothing but barren rock from the other side of the gate. They had expected Narim, or another big alien, or at the very least another note, but instead they got gravel and granite, a huge wall of storm cells piling up on the horizon, and not a soul in sight. That plus the request for medical aid didn't make anyone feel overly optimistic, but Hammond had given them a go. A treaty was a treaty, after all. Apparently it took more than a little backstabbing between planetary allies to make the general go back on his word.

At the foot of the ramp leading up to the gate, Jack checked his gun, his ammunition, his knife, his 'zat, his other knife. Flashlight, canteen, sunscreen, umbrella, extra pair of socks. Dry gear, wet gear, cold gear, hot gear -- you just never knew what might come in handy.

Over to his left, Carter was fidgeting. There was a clearly anticipatory light in her eyes, and her cheeks were flushed.

Jack gave Daniel a look that told him to _say something comforting_ , and Daniel gave him back a look that said _okay, I'll make something up._ He was just about to do it -- Jack had already tuned him out -- when Carter leaned closer to Daniel, never taking her eyes off the gate.

"Are you sure these are the right coordinates?" she whispered to Daniel out of the corner of her mouth.

Daniel's mouth snapped shut. He blinked. "Am I -- No. No, actually, the middle one was kind of smudged, I had to guess. It'll probably be fine."

"Daniel!"

"There were only twenty or so symbols it could have been."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry." Carter blew out a puff of air that lifted and scattered her bangs. "I'm just a little tense."

"Really? You don't look it."

Jack reached behind Carter's back and tapped Daniel firmly on the shoulder. "Daniel, leave Carter alone--"

"Thank you, sir," she said, while Daniel glared pointlessly at the ceiling.

"--the lady has a _date."_

Carter made an inarticulate noise that sounded vaguely profane, and Jack turned back to the gate. Smiling at either of them would be dangerous, for completely different reasons, so he smiled at his boots instead. His boots wouldn't kill him -- or make him laugh, which could also get him killed. He liked his boots. He really should take better care of them.

Hairy stood between Jack and Teal'c, towering over both of them. It was a little disconcerting, but he hadn't shown any signs of aggression. He just loped along behind whichever of them had care of him at the moment, tall and weird and slimy. He occasionally changed colors and waved his arms, and occasionally made odd noises. Every time he did, someone would look curiously at Daniel, and Daniel would shrug and make a stupid face. Jack wondered if his eyebrows ever got tired.

"Ready, kids?"

Carter nodded, Teal'c nodded, and Hairy turned an attractive shade of lavender. Carter and Teal'c both looked at Daniel. Daniel raised his eyebrows again, and stomped up the ramp to the gate.

Jack followed, shaking his head in unexpected sympathy. Guy couldn't be expected to know everything, right? If everybody wanted to know so badly what the colors meant, they should go ask Michaelson.

Then again, Michaelson had started saying the stripes on the walls were angry. So maybe not.

  


  


* * *

  


  


"Never say I don't take you guys anyplace nice." Jack pushed his goggles over his eyes. His vision streaked and spotted with rain instantly, turning the rest of SG-1 into fun-house freaks. Carter put on some weight; Daniel lost some; Teal'c looked shorter than both of them. A world gone mad.

After so many trips through so many gates, his team didn't even stumble. Carter moved out to twenty paces and started an instrument sweep while Teal'c kept watch at her back. Daniel went directly to the MALP to check that everything made it through intact, and Hairy went with him. Smooth and by the numbers.

"This place doesn't translate into nice, Jack," Daniel said. "Not in any language."

"What's not to love? This is a great place." Jack scanned the area around them and further out, all the way to the horizon. "If you like rocks."

"And rain." Daniel had a hand permanently affixed to his forehead, shielding his glasses. "We used to go to sunny planets."

"I can't win," Jack said. "Abydos was too hot. Veschke was too cold. P3R-359 had too many giant carnivorous spiders. I can't _work_ with you people."

Carter had wandered off to take some readings, and if she heard him at all, she didn't give any sign. Teal'c listened to Jack with every sign of utter concentration. Daniel said something sharp, not quite under his breath, and started an initial circular sweep of the area. Jack didn't understand a word of it. Too many consonants, probably ancient Egyptian. Whatever it was, it had Teal'c almost grinning.

Their lack of visible respect was adversely affecting Jack's morale.

P3X-457 had rocks and rain and thunder in abundance. The sky was almost black with clouds, and a steady grey rain fell straight down onto slate grey rocks and hills. The insides of Jack's eyelids were more interesting than P3X-457 was turning out to be. He thought about saying so out loud, but Teal'c wouldn't get it, Carter would ignore it, and Daniel would want concrete proof. Days like today, Jack didn't care for his job.

"There do not seem to be signs of human habitation."

"Teal'c is right, Colonel," Carter said. "Just..."

"Rock." Jack nodded. "Yeah, I can see that." Turning in a slow circle, he confirmed his initial impression. Stone hills to one side, stone plains to the other, stretching out to the horizon all around them. The stargate stood like a bulls-eye in the exact center of a wasteland. "Okay. Following a thorough visual and instrumental examination of the site, I recommend we go home. No sign of the Tollan, no visible alien habitation, no obvious strategic or cultural...anything...to be found. Besides, this place gives me the creeps."

"I concur," Teal'c said. "I, too, have the creeps."

Jack grinned at Teal'c. You had to hand it to the guy, he understood the concept of solidarity.

"Jack, hang on a second."

"Oh, no. Don't say that." He turned, and there was Daniel, ten feet away, rain streaking down his glasses, hair plastered to his head like a careless coat of brown paint. "I hate when you say that. Why do you always have to say that?"

"Look at these striations. This stone looks...melted." Daniel was crouched down, staring with slack-jawed utter devotion at a patch of rock just like every other patch of rock within view. He looked completely empty-headed like that, and Jack, helpless but thankfully unobserved, grinned down at him like an idiot through the rain.

"Great." Jack shook his head, clearing that train of thought right out of it. He shouldered his rifle and tugged at Daniel's backpack. "We'll put our special melted rock team on it just as soon as we get back home. Where it's not raining. You have noticed that it's raining, haven't you, Daniel?"

"He's got a point, Colonel," Carter said. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like this." She leaned down and ran her fingers over the rock's surface, then lifted her hand up and looked at it. "It feels...weird."

Daniel looked up at Jack, smiling in that way he had, that way that meant 'way cool' no matter what culture you came out of. "It tingles," he said. "Like pins and needles. Try it, Jack."

Jack looked at Daniel. With exaggerated care, he pulled an MDU out of his pocket, and clicked it on to scan for radiation. The rock they were on could be solid plutonium for all they knew, and Daniel thought it felt nifty. "It's clear," he said after a few seconds with no detectable surges. "Just don't put anything in your mouths, kids."

"The MALP would've picked up any significant levels of radiation," Daniel said absently. Then he looked up, suddenly sharp-eyed and blank-faced. "Of course, this melting could have happened between the last transmission of the MALP and our arrival through the gate. Or the rock could be imbued with a kind of radiation we haven't encountered before, something the monitors wouldn't pick up. Our hair could start falling out any second."

"Thanks," Jack said with a bright, false smile. "My own personal ray of sunshine." He went closer and took a grudging look at the markings that had Daniel so excited, but left the MDU running, just in case.

"On my world," Teal'c said, "The sensation of being punctured is considered to be unpleasant."

"Well, yeah, Teal'c... but it's just an expression. It means... well, have you ever had your foot go to sleep, and then it wakes up and --"

"Daniel, for cryin' out loud..."

Daniel's eyes regained some focus. "Right. Look, here, Teal'c... give me your hand." He pulled Teal'c down beside him and guided a large, dark hand across the ripples in the rock. "See?"

Teal'c looked at his hand with an odd expression. Odd, for Teal'c. So, any expression at all on that face made headlines, but this one was odder than usual. "Pins...and needles," he said.

Jack slapped him on the shoulder, shaking his head. "Welcome to the joys of humanity, my friend. Next lesson, paper cuts and shin splints."

Daniel stood up. He had that intense, focused look again, the one that meant he was about to move a mountain and that mountain's name was Jack O'Neill. Jack hated that look almost as much as he loved it. It keyed him up. One thing you had to say for Daniel; you hung with him, you never got bored.

"Out with it," Jack said. "We're on the clock."

"I think we should look around. These striations are everywhere. If something melted this rock, it might still be around. And you have to admit, that's a pretty good indicator of a high level of technology."

Eyebrows raised, hopeful, expectant -- Daniel looked kind of like a hungry cocker spaniel. It wasn't an impression Jack would be sharing any time soon. Not with Daniel, anyway. Carter might appreciate it, later. Out of earshot.

"Why would anything stick around here?" Jack waved an arm in the general direction of the entire planet, turning in a circle. "Here is nowhere. There isn't anything here. Whatever did this, it's probably long gone."

"It could be something you could shoot people with. A weapon of some kind."

"Something I could -- You know, contrary to popular belief, I do have other interests. I love curling, and I'm quite the jazz fan..."

"It could be important! Come on, Jack, just a few minutes. Let's just see what's over that ridge."

Daniel pointed; Jack looked, and almost instantly wanted to say no. Partly it was reflex -- Daniel's requests were usually sensible, rational, compassionate ones united by brilliance and a common lack of practicality. Mainly, though, it was the way the edge of rock rose up like a jagged razor into the gloomy sky, a black slice of solid, forbidding stone.

He didn't like it. Jack had a strong feeling that he didn't want to know what was over that ridge. It looked like there'd just be more rain over that ridge. Or worse. In his experience, nothing friendly hung out behind ridges in the middle of thunderstorms. Still, there didn't seem to be any logical, rational reasons not to at least check it out -- and in his experience, nothing less than logical and rational would get Daniel Jackson back through the stargate without a look around.

"Colonel, it'll just take a few minutes," Carter said. Her eyes were huge and vocal, spouting paragraphs she was never going to say. "If the Tollan were here, and something happened...."

Jack sighed, and pulled his rifle off his shoulder and into a defensive position. "Okay," he said. "Ten minutes. Carter, you're with me. Teal'c, Daniel, and Hairy, you guys stay here and stay ready to dial. If we find anything scary over there, I want us all to hit the gate running. Got it?"

"Affirmative," Teal'c said.

"Why can't I go?"

"Because," Jack told Daniel with a vicious, arbitrary thrill. "I said so."

  


* * *

  


He was right about the other side of the ridge. It was to be expected, he'd been doing this kind of thing since he got out of high school, but God forbid anybody under his command should actually listen to him. He'd given up, he'd caved, he'd surrendered his authority to a geek way back on that first mission to Abydos and here was the fruit of that tree, falling all around him.

They'd crossed more rock, with Carter bending over every few paces and running her hand over the ground. She made excited scientist noises, attempted to translate them into military English, then moved on. Eventually the translations got shorter and then stopped altogether. Just as well; having things explained slowly to him in words of one syllable didn't put Jack in the sweetest of all possible moods.

The ridge itself wasn't terribly offensive. What was on the other side of it...

"It looks like a pizza." Jack's stomach rumbled alarmingly at that moment, and he shot a glance over at Carter. She was biting her lip, and pointedly not looking in his direction. "Hey, breakfast was ten hours ago," he said. "I'm still a growing boy."

"You're a boy pushing fifty," she said calmly.

"Forty-five," Jack said. "But thanks for the tip. I'll have a facial."

"I think that thing is alive."

The edges lapped at the rock shore in almost the same way the edges of lakes everywhere lapped at their shores, but even Jack's unscientific eye picked up the differences. Lakes everywhere else lapped their shores unevenly. They didn't suck at their shores like this one did, and they didn't do it with a regularity that reminded a guy of heavy breathing.

"I wonder what it eats," Carter said.

"Probably random explorers who come through stargates wondering what's over the next ridge," Jack said. "I should've let Daniel come look."

"Colonel."

"Now, don't give me that look, Carter. You know it and I know it. If it weren't for Daniel, we'd all be drying off in a nice, warm debriefing room right now instead of trying to figure out what a giant hungry lake does for take-out."

"Jack? Sam?"

The call came from behind and off to the left, much closer than it should have. So much for sticking with the gate. Jack glanced over his shoulder and sighed. For a moment he just let his head fall back, face upturned, the slow, steady rain washing over him.

Then he straightened. Had to at least act like he was still in control.

"Move out, Carter. Look happy to be going. I don't know what that thing is, but I want to get out of here before Daniel decides we have to make friends with it."

"We're sending a team back, though -- right, sir?"

"Yeah, 'cause SG-11 doesn't hate us enough already."

"Narim and the other Tollan could be --"

"Okay! Fine, good, whatever, we'll send a team back! Just--"

"Of course, sir."

Carter was a good soldier. Jack had always appreciated that about her, but never moreso than now. She followed her orders to the letter, and with such sincerity that Daniel actually slowed down in his approach to the ridge. Jack started toward him and Carter followed suit, a lively spring in her step. She made it look like walking away from the ridge was fun, like she was setting out on an adventure. Jack made a mental note never to play poker with that particular lady.

"Nothing to see here," Jack said firmly when he reached Daniel's side. He nudged at Daniel with his elbow, bringing his attention back from the crest of stone standing high against the horizon. "Sorry. No Tollan. No rock-melting machines, no lost civilizations. No weapons of mass destruction. Looks like we all strike out today."

Daniel frowned, but he turned and walked with them, falling into step like the obedient little team player he'd never been. On the way back to the gate, Jack accidentally bumped into Daniel with his shoulder, and smiled when Daniel glared up at him. After a second, the glare faded, and Daniel shook his head and smiled back.

They found Hairy and Teal'c at the gate. It was already dialed up, shimmering blue fire, the only spot of color on the planet as far as the eye could see. Jack sent his IDC, waited for confirmation, then waved them through and watched them disappear Earthward. Seconds later the three of them stood at the gate, Jack and Carter looking into the event horizon, Daniel looking elsewhere, as usual. The man's lack of interest in his own planet could be disheartening at the best of times, but watching him gaze with longing at what was basically a giant pebble with an atmosphere was more than Jack could take. It wasn't even a _nice_ atmosphere.

With a sigh, he pushed Carter through the gate and knotted one hand in the back of Daniel's collar. He thought he heard a startled yelp as he walked them both through the stargate, but it might have been just another crack of thunder.

  


  


* * *

  


  


Grassland, tall and pale green, like young wheat, as far as Jack could see. Some trees off in the distance, scrubby and dark. The MALP rested serenely on the wide, empty platform around the gate, unconcerned by its mislocation. A fresh breeze was stirring, slowly rising, the cool front edge of the slate blue storm cells piling up against the horizon. A red-tinged buzz drifted over him, a tingle on his skin, and vanished.

Jack raised his P-90, jogged down the steps, and turned to stare at the tall stone pillars that flanked the gate on either side. When Daniel had sorted out his feet, gaped at the sky, and turned around to face the right direction, he stared up at the pillars, too.

"Oh," he said, startled. Daniel rubbed his arms, frowning, and looked over at Teal'c, who was minding Hairy and guarding Carter while she poked at the DHD. "Huh."

"Yeah." Jack walked over to take a closer look at the one on his right. "Are you sure you dialed the right address?"

Daniel shot him a very, very dark look. "You're the one who got IDC confirmation. You tell me."

Jack looked down at his IDC. It _had_ registered confirmation. It still was. He frowned, not knowing what that meant, but not at all happy about it. "What I meant to say was, can you read this stuff?"

"The language is Asgard..."

"Thanks, Daniel. Even I could have figured that out. What does it _say_?"

Daniel traced the figures, reading them as much with his hands as with his eyes. "Well, it's a Hammer. I don't think this one bothers to transport the Goa'uld, though." He glanced over at Jack, eyes unreadable. "Assuming this isn't just poetic license, this particular Hammer takes a much more direct approach."

"It did not harm me," Teal'c said.

"It wouldn't, not now that the Asgard know we're out here. Especially not now that they know many of the Jaffa are in rebellion against their Goa'uld masters. I'd be surprised if they stopped any Jaffa these days."

"So, what does it mean? More Unas? More Vikings? What?"

"If I'm reading this correctly, none of the above. It says the planet is unoccupied -- it was evacuated...hm. I can't tell if this says five hundred years or five thousand."

"Not that I blame them, but evacuated why? Place doesn't look dangerous, unless it's really possible for a man to die of boredom."

"The storm is interesting enough."

"They left because it _rained_?"

"I can't tell why they left. It's worn away, which makes me think probably five thousand years ago. But apparently this planet is still under the protection of the Asgard; the text is absolutely explicit on that point."

"Great." Jack turned to Carter, who'd started poking around inside the DHD as soon as she'd registered grass instead of gate room. "So, that's a start on the where. Any word on the how?"

"This DHD has been completely rewired. It's missing several control crystals, and there's some weird bridging going on...wow, I didn't even know you could _do_ that. I wonder if --"

"Carter!"

She jumped, and snapped as close to attention as she could get with her head buried in the innards of an alien artifact. "Sorry, sir. I don't know yet. I don't think we can use this to get home, though. It looks like it only goes one place now, no matter what address is dialed. The symbols aren't really hooked into the activation crystals; they light up, but when you hit the center it dials a pre-set address. That's probably what happened when we tried to dial home from P3X-457. It's really very sophisticated work, Colonel; very clean, very detailed. It doesn't look like Goa'uld technique to me. I mean, none of it's smoking, for one thing; their engineers have a tendency to route max power through pretty shoddy materials, kind of like trying to hammer a glass nail through concrete. This is sort of the opposite of that; nothing at all wasted."

"That's pretty detailed for an 'I don't know', Carter."

"Yes, sir."

Jack shook his head. "Okay, so Narim sends us to a rock with a stargate, but instead of letting us go home, the stargate sends us through a Hammer to some of the finest pasture land in the galaxy, where we find a DHD compromised by somebody other than the Goa'uld. Is this sounding like a set-up to anybody other than me?"

"It makes sense," Daniel said. "The Tollan are fleeing the Goa'uld, after all, and the Goa'uld clearly can't follow them here. A simple re-direct, with no need to risk the address falling into the wrong hands; even if the Goa'uld did manage to get hold of Hairy and find 457, they'd be toast the second they tried to go back home."

"I don't like it," Jack said flatly. "Which argues in favor of the Tollan being behind it."

"So that's the why," Daniel said.

"Leaving us with--"

"--the 'What do we do now?'"

"Exactly. Any ideas, Carter?"

Carter muttered something into the DHD's circuitry. Jack couldn't make it out, but it didn't sound affirmative regardless. He walked over to her legs, and peered down to make sure the rest of her was still there. "Carter?"

"Five minutes!" she said, not even pulling her head out.

"Till what?" Jack wondered, not expecting an answer, and not getting one. He looked over at Daniel, who'd taken Hairy and gone back to his pillar-reading, and at Teal'c, who was casually scanning the horizon for anything that might show up needing to get shot.

"You guys do your things, then," Jack said. "I'll just be over here ...supervising."

Nobody paid him the slightest bit of attention.

  


  


* * *

  


  


In the immediate area there was nothing to suggest that the Tollan refugees had ever come through the stargate. For that matter, there was nothing to suggest that anyone had ever come through the stargate, other than themselves. After an initial investigation, Jack was beginning to wonder if the planet had ever been inhabited. He didn't want to say anything, but he was starting to think maybe Daniel had read that first address wrong.

One thing was certain; if the Tollan _had_ started this cosmic wild goose chase, if they had ever even been on this planet, they weren't here now. There was nothing but wind and grass here now. "So," Jack said. "I say we fix the DHD and go home."

"There would appear to be no purpose in remaining here."

Jack clapped Teal'c on the shoulder. "My sentiments exactly."

"I checked for foot-paths and didn't see anything." Daniel shrugged, and looked at Carter. "But...I could look again. Why don't I... I'll just go look again." He trudged off toward the other side of the gate.

"Sir," Carter said stiffly.

Jack closed his eyes.

"I can rewire the DHD to get us home; I'm pretty sure I understand what's been done to it, and if I can reverse it, and swap out some of the crystals, I can change the preset address to dial Earth. It'll take about a day, maybe a little more."

"But."

"But, if it was Narim who rewired the DHD on 457 to bring us here and confirm IDC receipt, then we'll probably find him and the Tollan wherever this DHD takes us. We still have the MALP, we can send it ahead to make sure it's safe--"

Jack was already shaking his head. "No. I'm sorry, Major, but we're already one step off the grid. We take another, we risk getting too far ahead of whatever team Hammond's already sent after us. And we can't even be sure if it's the Tollan behind this, or that they're reeling us in just for the pleasure of our company. Our orders don't include random gate-hopping on a hunch."

"Yes, sir. Of course, our first priority is to get the gate working properly and report in." Carter's lips had no color at all in them, and her eyes had narrowed, just a little bit. "But if, having reported in, you were to request permission to move on to the next set of coordinates..."

"And if Hammond were to agree, which I would not put my money on..."

"I'm sure you could convince him, sir," Carter said. "If you wanted to."

"That's also a pretty big if. I'm not getting inspired to great heights of trust here, and I'm not wildly impressed with your boyfriend's sense of tact and diplomacy this time around, either--"

Carter beamed at him. "Thank you, sir. I know you'll do your best. I'll help Teal'c set up the perimeter, then start work on the DHD." She was gone before Jack could get in another word.

Jack sighed, and scanned the horizon in front of the gate. Daniel had wandered around to the other side and was scanning the horizon there. Jack watched him through the ring; no SG-1 on that side, and that was the only real difference. Daniel completed the circle and stood beside Jack.

"See anything?"

"Grass."

Jack nodded. "Got a lot of that here, too. Good ... grazing planet."

"Maybe they have cows."

"Maybe this is where we got our cows."

"Cows originated on Earth, Jack."

"Oh, so now you're a cow-ologist?"

Daniel shrugged and looked off toward the approaching storm. "I minored."

Jack looked at him. Daniel turned to face Jack and raised his eyebrows. After a long moment in which he was sure Daniel was going to break but in which Daniel never actually broke, Jack said, "You did not minor in cows."

"It wasn't technically a minor. I took a course." Jack rolled his eyes and Daniel tried again. "I read a book?"

"On cows."

"More of a really boring, over-extended article, actually. Nice pictures, though." He gazed at Jack serenely. "Very bucolic."

  


  


* * *

  


  


Carter and Hairy had gone out about fifty yards on the left, and Teal'c on the right. They trooped back in and joined Jack and Daniel, squinting against the sun and looking puzzled.

"Report."

Carter shaded her eyes and looked off into the distance again. Like she thought maybe it had changed in the two seconds she'd had her back to it. "We're secure for the night. There's just a lot of grass, sir. No evidence that the Tollan were ever here. "

"Perhaps they were not. Perhaps the original address we dialed was incorrect," Teal'c suggested.

"No, actually I just made it up," Daniel said earnestly. "I thought we could use the holiday."

Teal'c lifted one eyebrow to Daniel's two, and didn't say anything.

Jack closed his eyes and started counting down from ten. _Leave_. They were all supposed to be on leave.

Daniel looked up at the sky. "It's going to start raining soon. Why don't you guys set up camp, and I'll see if I can get anything out of Hairy."

"I thought you said you couldn't talk to him."

"Jack, I've only had an hour and a half with him, and most of that I spent getting the matter phase device off of his arm. I've still got green slime under my fingernails, by the way. I haven't exactly had time to build a vocabulary."

"Okay, okay. I was just asking. You go ... do whatever it is you do... and we'll...do the stuff we do."

" _Thank_ you."

"How long do you think --"

"A really long time," Daniel said, and walked away.

Jack watched him leave with Hairy tagging after him. That was something, anyway; Hairy had a grasp of basic gestures like over here, follow me, stop, that kind of thing. Don't eat that. Though that one had only been necessary once, Daniel's pocket calculator almost hadn't survived it.

It didn't take long to set up a base camp even under the worst of circumstances. Teal'c and Carter had a lot of practice. Jack would have helped them, but then, somebody had to hold up the stargate. He sat back against the ring, carefully clear of the opening, and watched the storm advancing toward them across the plains. He could actually see the leading edge of the rain, a fine silver curtain. Pretty, except it was about to turn their nice clean camp into a mudhole.

Once a fairly stable tarp had been set up over the DHD, Carter abandoned Teal'c to deal with their lodging and buried herself in circuits. They had about an hour of light left, Jack figured, and less than that till the storm hit. It didn't look like Carter was overly concerned with the light, or with getting rained on.

Daniel had taken Hairy a few yards away, probably so he could try to keep its attention. He was totally focused. It wasn't quite as entertaining as the airplane thing he'd done on the planet with the mimes, but it was definitely runner-up material. Jack watched for a while, then looked down at his boots to give Daniel some privacy. Then grinned and watched Daniel some more, because who was he kidding? On active duty, a guy took his fun where he could get it.

First Daniel would wait for Hairy to do something. Then, Daniel would watch what Hairy did, and try to imitate it. This consisted of making weird sounds Jack could just barely hear, and making strange gestures with his arms. At first, it looked like Daniel wasn't bothering with the colors, but then Hairy waved an arm, moaned, and went from green to white.

And Daniel waved the same arm, moaned, and started stripping down. Hairy made a startled, high-pitched sound and turned bright orange.

Carter's head had poked out of the DHD at the sound. She glanced over to Jack's station beside the stargate, then back toward Daniel, looking faintly alarmed. "Uh, sir. I think -- do you think we should --"

Jack puffed out his chest. "Now, Carter. Have you ever known me to stand in the way of science?"

  


* * *

  


When the rain hit, Hairy started howling. Daniel didn't try to imitate that sound, for which Jack was grateful; he didn't think a human throat was capable. He did start pulling his (wet) clothes back on over his (wet) limbs, though, and managed to arrive at the tent simultaneously dressed and dripping. His glasses were fogged and dotted with rain and he tripped going in through the flap, even though Jack held it open for him. Hairy followed him, shivering and leaving a trail of dissolving slime, and Jack followed Hairy. The rain came down in sheets and thunder cracked through the dark grey clouds like the wrath of God; before the tent flap closed and sealed them away from the weather, Jack saw forked blue lightning raking across the sky.

He stripped off his vest and his jacket, dripping everywhere. "So," he said, grinning at Daniel. "Are you kids engaged now?"

Daniel glared, took off his jacket, and started wringing it out. The flap opened again, and Teal'c and Carter came in. The combined drip of their clothes created a small lake just inside the tent's entrance. Carter looked wistfully through the canvas wall, toward the DHD.

"Tarp blow away?"

She nodded, eyebrows drawn together. Jack dropped a hand onto her shoulder and squeezed. "It's not going anywhere, Carter. Assuming we don't drown, you can get back to it in the morning."

Later, over a warm meal of mystery MRE and coffee, Daniel said, "Hairy doesn't seem responsive to the color shifts. At least not in the only way I could manage it. He lets me mimic his sounds and gestures, but nothing I do seems to have any actual meaning for him. It's like I'm not even there."

"That's too bad," Jack said sympathetically. "Have you considered couples therapy?"

"If I could see him talking to one of his own kind, I think I could figure it out. Just a brief conversation -- hi, how are you, fine, what are those strange dry creatures you brought through the Great Water Ring -- just enough to pick out a pattern. Are the sounds independent of the colors, are they emphasis, or nuance? -- I don't know." Daniel put down his empty coffee cup, and accepted a refill from Teal'c with a distracted nod. "The gestures are too broad and uniform to be a true sign language, there's not enough differentiation to form any kind of grammar or syntax. Unless there are variations in the shade of the colors that our eyes just can't see, none of it alone is differentiated enough. There has to be some kind of synergistic relationship between --"

"Daniel."

"Yes?"

Jack waved a hand at the room in general. "We're not really listening."

Daniel looked at Teal'c, who stared back with neither confirmation nor denial, and then at Carter, who shrugged and smiled. "Oh," he said. "Right." He looked at Hairy and sighed. "Narim can talk to you," he muttered.

"Now, now." Jack leaned over and patted Daniel's shoulder. "Narim may be able to talk to our pal, but he hasn't done anything to earn it. He probably has some kind of super-techno-telepathic-thought-exchange thingy that shoots out irresistible translation rays or something."

Daniel smiled a little. "Thanks."

"And you can bet he won't give us one of them, if he does," Jack finished darkly.

"Do you ever think of anything besides getting cool alien technology?"

Jack sat down on his bedroll and started pulling off his boots. "What can I say? I'm an early adopter. I had the first TiVo on my block."

Carter stopped looking pointedly at Daniel's wet clothes draped over a box of rations, and sat down on her own blanket. "Daniel, do you think -- you didn't find anything at all? I know there wasn't evidence of any kind of habitation, but if the Tollan had ever camped here, even just on their way to somewhere else, wouldn't there be something?"

"I can tell you what I didn't find," Daniel said, kneeling beside her. "I didn't find any sign of a fight or a struggle. I didn't find any burn scars in the grass or the dirt. I didn't find any blood, or disturbed or trampled turf that might indicate that the Tollan had fled the area with any kind of speed. Teal'c?"

"Had there been a battle, the signs would be unmistakable."

"But shouldn't there be -- I don't know, refuse of some kind?"

"We are talking about the Tollan, right?" Jack looked over at her with a warm, reassuring smile. "They painted their entire planet white, Carter. They don't do trash."

While Carter looked at her boots and tried to relocate her cool, unflappable military exterior, Jack looked at Daniel. He looked like he wanted to say something. His face was wide open and he was totally there, like Daniel almost never was.

But Daniel didn't say anything. He smiled at Jack, eyes warm with approval. Jack held his eyes for a second longer than he had to, then looked away, too transparent to maintain it. Daniel looked away too, back toward Carter. She was in a better place, mentally and physically; she was smiling, too, and putting away Daniel's wet clothes.

"I would have done that," Daniel said.

"Yeah." She smiled wider, tight-lipped. "Sometime tomorrow."

Teal'c took first watch outside, though Daniel argued half-heartedly against it; there wasn't a living creature larger than a mosquito on the entire planet as far as they could tell, he said, so Teal'c could watch just as well from inside the tent. Jack nodded in agreement and sent Teal'c out into the rain anyway, and Teal'c went with what looked very much like a smile, except that it was Teal'c. He expected Teal'c to stand outside the tent in the pouring, pelting rain for two hours before Carter relieved him _and like it_ \-- but it didn't quite work out that way. Teal'c came back into the tent almost as soon as he'd left it, with a sodden, shivering wreck of a Tollan in tow.

"Narim!" Carter went to him immediately, taking him out of Teal'c's hands and offering a towel. She hadn't had that towel half a second ago and Jack had no idea how she got to it that fast, without noticeably moving. Narim accepted it with a grateful nod, not able to speak right away, and with as much dignity as could reasonably be expected.

Jack let her fuss over Narim for a few seconds before clearing his throat meaningfully.

"Oh! Right, uh, sorry, sir." She flashed an apologetic smile at Narim and took a militarily correct step backwards. She didn't look at Jack at all.

"Little wet out there, is it?" Jack inquired, smiling.

"Yes," Narim said seriously. "Extremely. This planet is known for its frequent deluges in spring, and flash floods are not entirely unknown in certain regions." Jack's smile fell away, and Narim's eyebrows shot up. "Not that we're in any danger here. A river just a few miles to the east absorbs the greatest part of the runoff, and the ground does not grow heated enough to harden and repel the water."

"And now, over to Chris for some halftime scores."

Narim frowned. "I beg your pardon -- I do not --"

"It's his way of asking if you're okay," Daniel said.

"I am fine." Narim bowed his head slightly, which Jack took to signify gratitude at their concern. "However, many other Tollan are not. You know that a small number of us managed to escape Tollana's destruction, but we took many casualties in consequence, and many were injured even before we reached the ship. Our escape was -- costly." Narim looked down at his hands; they were shaking. "Chancellor Travell gave her life to slow the enemy's advance. Without her sacrifice, none of us would have survived."

"I'm sorry, Narim," Jack said, and he really sort of was, in spite of everything. "She was one hell of a lady."

"Thank you." Narim's smile was brief, but warm. "She quite liked you, Colonel, though it was not her way to show such things openly. She regretted her actions toward you and your people."

A silence fell, broken only by the steady hiss of the rain. Her actions had nearly cost SG-1 their asses, but she thought she was protecting her people and Jack couldn't honestly say he wouldn't have done the same if it were his planet on the line. He hoped he wouldn't; he figured Carter or Daniel or Teal'c would find some other way. But if they didn't? He shook his head and closed his eyes, seeing Travell tall and straight and serene as she pronounced the verdict that set Skaara free. When he looked up he met Daniel's eyes, saw the same memory there.

"We have brought the medical supplies you requested." Teal'c broke the silence respectfully, bowing, with the manner of ending a ceremony. "We have come to provide whatever assistance you may need."

"I am grateful; I thank you on behalf of all the Tollan. We have not encamped here; there was a slight possibility that our first departure through a gate was watched, and we wished to put several transitions between us and the Goa'uld. I apologize for the ruse which led you to this world; it was imperative our retreat not be followed."

"It's a good thing you showed up when you did." Jack looked down at the mud creeping under the tent flap and frowned. "Carter has some serious questions for you about what the hell you did to get us here."

"This was our last stop but one; when the rain lessens, I will lead you to our new base of operations. I was not sure you would attempt to come further once our alterations to the dialing device were discovered."

Jack didn't roll his eyes, because rolling one's eyes at alien ambassadors was frowned on at the SGC. Especially alien ambassadors with technological know-how that could win a war for you, _especially_ alien ambassadors in trouble, who just might end up owing you one. His eyes did cut over to Daniel, though, he couldn't help that; and Daniel was looking back at him, comically boggling.

Jack turned back to Narim with a sense of wild vindication. It actually made it _easy_ to smile and say, "Aww, have a little faith."

The utter lack of response when he asked for volunteers to set up another tent convinced him not to push it. There was a brief and heated discussion about the advisability of the project; who would put it up, who would occupy it, whether there was a chance in hell of the inside staying dry. Jack felt a little put out. Four people in a three-man tent worked fine if somebody stayed on watch at all times; four people plus a wacky slimy alien would have to be really friendly.

Five plus Hairy would need to exchange rings.

Teal'c went back on watch, and Hairy -- who seemed to have developed an attachment -- went with him. Carter got the only dry spot (no such thing as a feminist in a leaky tent, he'd learned shortly after their first trip through the gate) and Jack ended up squished against the canvas with a tent stake in the small of his back and Daniel's hair in his face. Rain seeped in as fast as the cold did, leaving him damp and frozen on one side and dangerously warm and chummy on the other.

  


  


* * *

  


  


In the morning they fixed the stargate. The sun was out, shining with offensive cheer on the bowl of muck left by the storm. Narim was eager to get back to wherever it was he came from, and Carter was eager to help him. She leaned over his shoulder while he worked, occasionally reaching in to poke at something and smiling _all the time_. Narim hadn't stopped blushing since they started tinkering.

Teal'c packed up camp with Hairy's help. If Narim could talk to Hairy, he hadn't done anything about it so far. They'd looked at each other, nodded, and gone about their business. Hairy's business this morning seemed to be following Teal'c around wherever he went.

Jack looked around, saw his world slowly coming to order, and walked over to the stargate. Daniel was sitting on the steps with a camcorder, panning down the length of the columns and muttering under his breath.

"You're never going to be able to hear that when we get back," Jack said. "You should speak up."

"I'm not dictating. I'm thinking."

"You're doing it too loud."

Daniel pulled his face away from the camcorder and squinted up at Jack. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Nope," Jack said, grinning, and dropped down onto the steps beside him. "Carry on."

This was nice, Jack thought, leaning back on his elbows and tilting his face to the sun. Daniel's voice droning on beside him, a cool breeze, a blue sky, other people doing all the grunt work. It was good to be king. He thought about napping, which made him think about waking up slow and easy with Daniel's face half an inch from his own. That had been kind of nice, too.

"You're doing it again," he said, just to see what Daniel would do.

Daniel turned the camcorder off and put it back into his pack.

"Hey, I didn't mean you had to stop."

"No, I was done." Daniel shifted, turning to match Jack's sprawl beside him. "I mean, it's a Hammer. It's in Asgard. I've got the text on film. One of my guys can translate it when we get home."

Jack's eyebrows went up. "Did we leave your intellectual curiosity back on Rock World?"

Daniel shrugged. Jack sat up a little straighter. "No, I'm serious. What's going on? Same old alien races getting you down? Are we _boring_ you, out here?"

"No!"

"Then what the hell, Daniel? You're starting to freak me out."

Daniel shrugged again, more awkwardly this time, a light flush coming up in his cheeks. "We're supposed to be on leave," he said.

Jack blinked, and stared for a minute. Then he started to grin. "You're _slacking_ ," he crowed, laughing. "Daniel Jackson, intrepid explorer, obsessive-compulsive interstellar workaholic. You're blowing off _work_ right now!"

"I think I'm owed a little downtime," he said, ducking his head just a little then popping it up to smile at Jack. "A few minutes, anyway."

"Hey, if you're slacking off, and I'm slacking off, and we're both slacking off together... that means we're kind of hanging out."

"That's the technical term, I think."

"Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson, hanging out together." He shook his head. "That's gonna make the papers."

Daniel kicked at Jack's foot. "We hang out all the time."

"Sure, when something awful happens, or when Sam or Teal'c starts it. This is different."

"It is not."

"Is. You stopped working to chill with me here on the steps, on an alien planet, _on duty._ It's completely different."

"Is not," Daniel said, and then Carter shouted over that the DHD was fixed and their slacking off time was over.

  


* * *

  


 _"Clear to send the MALP, sir,"_ Carter's voice said through the radio. _"We're exactly where we're supposed to be."_

" _This_ time," Jack said, aside to Daniel. Into his radio he said, "Noted, Carter. We're on our way," and when he'd clicked back off, "in spite of my grave misgivings about this entire affair. You think we got everything? Keys, wallet -- did you turn off the coffee pot?"

"All set."

"You know, we never have to hare off into the unknown searching for any of _my_ intergalactic conquests. I just want that on the record."

"You're more of a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy," Daniel said. His eyes were a little crinkled around the edges, but he wasn't exactly smiling. Not exactly.

"I'm just saying, Daniel. The stargate is not a dating service."

"I wasn't the one who granted Teal'c permission to make conjugal visits that cost more than the gross national product of a small third-world nation."

"Hey, he was married, what was I supposed to do? Married men have needs."

Daniel had the remote; he powered up the MALP and backed it a little bit away from the gate. "On Abydos, sex was only allowed under very specific conditions. Only between sunset and sunrise, and only on certain high holy days. It was regarded as a sacrament. Luckily, they had at least one high holy day every month. Usually two."

Jack winced. "Daniel..."

The MALP paused. Daniel looked over at Jack, sun in his eyes, squinting. He was smiling. "Did you notice you have a muddy foot in your mouth?"

"I'm getting used to the taste. And I wasn't thinking about Sha're."

"I wasn't either. At first, I mean. I don't think about her as much as I think I should."

Jack remembered that. Before Abydos, Charlie's shattered face was always right in front of him. After, when it started to fade and let him see some of the world around him, he kept trying to bring it back. After that, when it stopped working, he spent a lot of time getting really drunk. "We never think about them as much as we think we should," he said.

Daniel nodded. He held Jack's gaze for a long time before he turned back to his work, steering the MALP through the event horizon.

"Only twice a _month_?" Jack said.

The grin came back. "That's if I was lucky."

Jack took a final look at the horizon. "You know... I kind of liked it here. It didn't feel like a mission. Felt a little like being on leave, don't you think? You got to screw around with a foreign language and an alien culture, Carter got to hang out with an old boyfriend, Teal'c got to stand watch a lot. I got to sit around and do nothing." With you, Jack didn't say, but that was a big chunk of what made it good. "I kind of wish I'd brought my fishing pole."

Daniel shot Jack a skeptical look. "No TV, no pizza delivery, sleeping in the mud..."

"Hey, it only rained once. And I don't know about you, but I slept like the dead. Hard surfaces are good for my back."

Daniel shook his head. He shouldered his pack, made a quick check of his canteen and his weapon, and took a step toward the gate. The blue surface of the singularity stuttered.

Jack looked at it. He looked at Daniel. A sound that never should have come from a stargate made them both take a giant step backward and duck, nearly falling down the stone steps. An arc of blue flashed into the air between the DHD and the gate, singed the air, and vanished.

So did the event horizon.

Jack looked up from his crouch, one hand on Daniel's shoulder to keep him down. Everything was still. The sun shone down on the muddied ground, the sky vaulted blue and clear overhead, and the unmistakable aroma of fried electrical components rose from the DHD. A lone curl of black smoke drifted up and vanished on the gentle breeze.

"The hell," Jack said finally, when it looked like nothing else was going to happen. He stood up and helped Daniel to his feet. "You okay?"

Daniel nodded slowly. He looked all around them, at the whole bunch of nothing that stretched out all the way to the horizon. "I don't know, Jack," he said, finally turning back to him. His mouth twitched, just a little. "This still feels kind of like a mission, to me."

  


* * *

  


They still had all their limbs. Not a bad baseline for a disaster, all things considered. Nobody was dead, or dying, or diseased. Jack liked to stay positive about this kind of thing. The residual electricity in the air made his skin feel a little crawly, and Daniel kept having to mush his hair down, but all in all, things could have been a lot worse.

Jack walked over to the DHD. He hit some coordinates, then hit the center. Nothing. He looked over at Daniel and sighed. Not that he didn't love the guy, but still. "Note to self: always send Carter through last."

"Sorry," Daniel said, clearly not meaning it at all. "I don't even change my own oil."

Jack walked back over to the steps, dropped his pack (at least he had his pack), and sat down. Daniel had his pack, too: another check in the plus column. Jack shrugged out of his jacket; it was starting to get warm. Daniel sat beside him, elbows on his knees, looking around.

"We could dial it manually, maybe," Daniel suggested.

"If we had a power source, yeah." Jack just let that one lay there. Clearly, they didn't have a power source.

"Maybe if there's another storm."

"And maybe if lightning just _happens_ to strike the stargate?"

"It could. It's a tall, free-standing metal structure. Stranger things have happened."

Jack looked at Daniel sharply, only relaxing when it became clear he wasn't appending a list. "Doesn't matter, we can't turn it by ourselves anyway."

"Speak for yourself," Daniel said. "I've been working out."

"Hm," Jack said, to avoid letting on that he'd noticed. Lately, noticing was the best part of his day. "Well, least the Goa'uld won't be dropping by."

"Not for long, anyway." Daniel's glance over at the Hammer was almost fond.

"And it's not like Carter and Teal'c don't know exactly where we are."

"Right."

"Soon as they can get a ship freed up, we're outta here. A week, tops."

"If that long," Daniel said solidly. Whatever else you could say about him, the guy had faith.

Jack leaned back, resting on his elbows. "You know, Narim did say there was a river."

Daniel turned his gaze on Jack curiously.

"Fishing," Jack explained patiently. "For sustenance, I mean."

"Oh, of course." Daniel rolled his eyes.

"Hey, we gotta eat, right?"

  


* * *

  


Point of fact, between them they had enough MREs to last out a month if they had to. A guy could live on an MRE a day. He wouldn't like it, but there they were in luck: the US Air Force didn't require its officers or its gentlemen to enjoy their work.

It was the activity that was key. They had to move. A week of mindless waiting -- maybe more, Jack admitted to himself -- could put a man a little too in touch with his inner child. Whiny people got whinier, angry people got angrier, scared people got more scared. Lonely people got lonelier; they thought too much, and thinking more was the last thing Jack or Daniel needed.

So, they hiked. Jack wasn't willing to split up, no matter how empty the planet seemed, so they struck out from the gate and walked a four-mile perimeter, more or less. They hit the river around lunchtime, a vast, rapid wash of brown water at least a mile across. Near shore the current was slow and lazy, leaves and waterbugs drifting quietly by like they had nowhere to go. In the middle, the current got vicious. Jack sincerely hoped they never had any need to cross it.

They sat down on the bank to rest, just a few yards shy of the water. The ground sloped sharply downward just beyond their feet. Trees dotted the riverbank on either shore. The glide of the water past them didn't account for the steady, pounding noise just to the south; there were rocks out there somewhere, maybe even falls.

"Are we camping here?" Daniel asked.

"We could."

"What if Teal'c and Sam show up?"

"They'll try us on the radio. I'm trying to decide if I'd feel weirder trying to sleep under a broken stargate or beside a strange river in monsoon season."

"I vote for the stargate, if that makes any difference. If anybody could dial into it, Sam would have by now. And this is a prime watering hole, assuming anything's out there looking for water."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "There's a cheerful thought." His mind suddenly filled with images of marauding lions, saber-tooth tigers, bears... "Hey, is there such a thing as a saber-tooth bear?"

Daniel looked over at Jack and grinned. "You want to find out?"

Jack huffed out a soft, annoyed breath. "So. Stargate it is."

They had lunch by the water, splitting an MRE between them and staying quiet, listening to the current. When they were done, they refilled their canteens from the river. They could filter and sterilize the water back at base camp. Hopefully, that would be enough to fend off whatever crazy bugs might be swimming around in there. Stuck on an empty planet with Daniel for an indeterminate amount of time could really go either way; stuck there with Daniel and alien dysentery could only end in tears.

After a while, Jack wandered down to the river's edge and hunted in dirt until he found a smooth, flat rock. It skipped five times before sinking beneath the surface: a blight on Jack's honor. He hunted around until he found another.

He heard movement behind him, but didn't turn around; Daniel knew not to go far, or out of sight. When he came back, he had a long, slender stick in one hand and a spool of twine in the other. Jack raised his eyebrows, impressed.

"Never know when you might need string," Daniel said.

When the sun started to sink, they collected what wood they could find lying under the sparse trees, and walked back. Jack felt good -- tired, but comfortable in his skin. There was no repeat of yesterday's storm, which was good, because they were missing their one and only tent and their ponchos had gone through with the MALP. Jack was trying not to think of all the stuff they'd sent through on the MALP.

Daniel built up a fire a little way off from the gate, and laid out his bedroll beside it. Jack didn't have to watch to know the notebook and the pen would come out next. There were probably some books in there, too. Sometime after they got back, Jack would need to teach him which supplies to send ahead and which supplies to wear.

"What do you think's happening with the others and the Tollan?" Daniel said when Jack had shaken out his bed on the other side of the fire.

Jack settled down, his jacket under the back of his head, looking up at the sky. "If they're smart, they're frantically trying to find a way to get us off this damn planet."

Daniel turned over on his side and rested his head on his hand. "Besides that. I wonder how the Tollan are doing, what they'll do next. What Hairy has to do with any of it. Do you think they're on his home planet?"

"I don't know." Jack looked over. "If they are, his people can't be very sophisticated. Otherwise, why would Narim need our help?"

Daniel nodded. His eyes lost focus, which made it easy for Jack to shift onto his side and just look. The fire did nice things to Daniel's skin, and the distant, quiet look on Daniel's face did nice things to Jack's heart. He was looking way more than he should lately, and he knew it. He looked anyway.

"Let's try to follow the river a while tomorrow," Daniel said, and Jack said yes, because why not, and because Daniel wanted to, and they were the only two people on the planet. Who was there to care if Jack caved a little, now and then? He turned his face back up to the darkening sky and the sparse scatter of stars, and after a while the fire died to embers and he heard Daniel snoring, and after a while, Jack was snoring, too.

  


* * *

  


They went north; Jack didn't want to risk a fall on the rocks he was sure they'd find to the south. He could keep the two of them alive for a long time, as long as they stayed more or less in one piece.

"We're fine," he said, somewhere around the third mile. "But we have to be careful. Either of us takes a fall, gets cut, gets bitten by something, whatever -- it could be dangerous."

"Well... yes."

"I mean, more so than usual, Daniel. We don't have the supplies to deal with a serious injury or illness, and while I don't expect to be stuck here more than a few weeks at most, we could screw this up if we're not extremely aware of ourselves and our surroundings. We need to play it absolutely safe."

"I'll be careful."

"I know you will," Jack said. "Because if you're not, you don't even want to think about what I'll do to you if you live. You get as much as a sniffle, I want to know about it."

"I'll be really, really careful."

"See that you are."

"I _will_. I lived a year on Abydos with no modern medicine, Jack, I think I know how to survive under primitive conditions."

Which was true, and Jack believed him, but then they got to the river and Jack had to take Daniel's field knife away to keep him from shaving with a bladeful of alien microbes. It wasn't that Jack doubted his survival instincts, not entirely. It was just that they didn't have a mirror.

"I'm not trying to say you're not graceful," Jack said by way of apology. "It's just that I've gotten used to you; I kind of want you to live." The subtle decrease in the jangling of Jack's nerves was worth the disgusted look Daniel gave him.

So, carefully north beside the river. Progress was slow, because they carried everything with them. There was no one to leave on watch; no matter how still and empty this world was (and they hadn't seen so much as a rabbit so far, though Daniel had pointed out a few lonely birds), Jack couldn't bring himself to leave anything behind unguarded. They'd walked almost six miles, and Jack was ready to turn them back toward the gate, when Daniel stopped and knelt to examine the ground.

Jack stopped beside him. "Something cool down there?"

Daniel didn't answer; his hands were busy, brushing aside grass and dust and bits of sod. His fingers were covered in dirt within seconds, same color as the ground. When he stopped, he stared for a second, then squinted up at Jack. "I think we're on a road."

Jack blinked. "A road?" He looked north, all the way to the horizon, then all the way back to the south. "To where?"

"The gate, I'd imagine. Come here."

"I am here," Jack said, but he took a step closer and leaned down. "What am I looking at?"

"Nothing." Daniel reached out and tugged at Jack's hand. His skin was dry and warm. He pulled, and Jack knelt down beside him and let Daniel press his palm into the dirt.

He felt it immediately: a low vibration, a buzz beneath his hand. He jerked back, but Daniel held him there a second longer and there they were, pins and needles, creeping up through his fingers. This time when he jerked back, he pulled Daniel away from the ground with him.

"It's probably perfectly safe," Daniel said.

"Yeah, well, it's the 'probably' in that sentence I have a problem with."

"Why would they build a road out of it if it were harmful to humans?"

Jack stared. "I don't know, Daniel. Maybe they didn't _like_ humans? Maybe they weren't humans themselves? Maybe it wasn't dangerous five thousand years ago but got dangerous as it broke down? For all we know, five thousand years of the plastics industry could do this to _our_ planet."

Daniel's eyes had gotten bigger while Jack was talking; when he stopped, Daniel looked down at the ground and scratched absently at his chin. Probably wishing Jack had let him shave.

"What?" Jack demanded. "That made total sense."

"No, it did. It does. I was just thinking." Daniel smiled crookedly, a real smile, the kind that made Jack hold himself a little straighter. "If I have to be stranded out here, I'm glad it's with you."

For a second, Jack didn't think he'd be able to say anything. Not with Daniel saying stuff like that, _looking_ at him like that. Daniel looked away before it got awkward, though, and after another second, Jack found his voice.

"Because I know so many innovative ways we could die horribly out here?" he said.

Daniel's smile got wider. "Well, it is pretty useful."

" So... we're going to stay off the road?"

"Yeah. Let's just figure out how wide it is."

It was forty feet across, and as they walked along beside it at a respectful distance, the dirt got thinner, then just patchy, and then was gone. The rock smoothed out, until it formed a long, unbroken highway pointing north beside the water.

"So that last planet," Jack said, when they'd walked maybe another two miles. "What do you think? Strip-mined?"

"Something like that. I'd still like to know what they used. I hope nobody was living there at the time."

Jack nodded, and didn't mention the pizza lake at all.

They'd walked further, so turning around was harder. It would have been easier just to camp where they were. Jack didn't trust the road, though, and didn't like feeling so exposed. Daniel was all for going on -- he thought there had to be a city out there somewhere, a _from_ that the road would lead _to_. To Jack's mind, the only thing worse than sleeping by an ancient, deserted alien highway would be camping in the outskirts of an ancient, deserted alien city. His shoulder blades itched just thinking about it.

The sun had been down for an hour by the time they made it back to the stargate, and the air had cooled off by at least ten degrees. They hadn't seen any clouds, but Jack didn't trust the weather. They had no tent, and nothing they could use to build one, so they strung a line between the gate and one of the pillars and slung a tarp over it. Worst case, they could crawl inside and wrap the ends around them; it wouldn't keep them happy, but it would keep them at least partially dry.

MREs were already getting old, but they split one anyway, trading it back and forth in front of the fire. Sparks leapt up from the flames and disappeared into the darkness overhead. Jack could feel Daniel's warmth all along his side. He wanted to reach out and touch, because if Daniel felt anything like Jack did, he'd be stiff and sore as hell in the morning. His shoulders were hunched, and his hands were still dirty, and the stubbled lines of his face looked tired and drawn.

But Jack didn't touch him. Daniel looked over at him once, and if he'd said anything at all Jack would have reached out, but Daniel just smiled, that weird new smile he'd picked up somewhere in the last year, the smile that was weird because he was finally letting people see it.

It didn't rain that night; they slept the night through.

  


  


* * *

  


  


The third day dawned colder than any of the others. Jack woke warm and rested, the smell of coffee in the air all around him. He had two blankets over him, and the tarp over those. He pushed them off of his face and peered out, squinting in the light. Daniel was packing for another hike, which seemed to sort Jack's day out for him.

The fire was high again, the flames pale against the daylight. Daniel had  
two tin cups sitting beside it, full to the brim. He handed one to Jack  
carefully, the bottom wrapped in a camouflage bandana. "Careful," he said. "It's hot."

It was instant, too, but it was hot and strong and Jack had never tasted anything better. He sat up, letting the blankets and the tarp pool around his waist. "If you were in the Air Force, I'd promote you. Hell, throw in some reconstituted eggs and I'll _marry_ you."

"Don't make promises," Daniel warned, and flipped him a sealed MRE.

Jack read the label and felt his heart expand happily in his chest. "Sweet! Eggs with _cheese._ Okay, spill. Where do you want to go today?"

Daniel shook his head. "You're ridiculously easy, you know that, right?"

"You can't annoy me today; don't even try. Just let me eat my eggs and drink my coffee, and we'll hit the road. Hey, you don't happen to have a copy of the _New York Times_ lying around, do you? Because that would be the icing on the cake."

"I have an article on cross-cultural pragmatics and strategy use in Egyptian Arabic and American English refusals, if you want it."

"Does it have a crossword?"

Daniel didn't even look up from his packing; Jack took that as a no.

Camp broke down as easily as it had set up the night before -- a little slower, maybe, but that was okay with Jack; there was an absolutely unmistakable sense of _vacation_ in the air. Nothing like breakfast in bed to take a little of the post-apocalyptic edge off a morning. Somewhere along Daniel's road to nowhere, the planet had stopped feeling deserted and started feeling kind of _dead._

"So, where to?" Jack said, when the fire was out and all their possessions were bundled up and ready to go.

"I'd like to go back to the river." Daniel looked east, where the sun was rising slowly out of a bank of white mist. "Then maybe south. I know you're worried about the rocks, but we can stop if things start to look dangerous."

Jack looked Daniel over, gauging his sincerity. There wasn't anything in his face that made Jack nervous, but sometimes it was hard to tell. "I say it's time to turn back, we turn back," Jack said firmly. "No arguments, we just go."

"Of course." Daniel sounded offended at the very suggestion. He shouldered his pack and started off to the east.

"Of course," Jack repeated under his breath. He stared for a minute, feeling slightly doomed, then grabbed his pack and grimly followed after.

South was rougher travel; the grass was thicker, brush more than anything else, and the ground was gravelly. They walked until the river curved vaguely to the west, and then just past to where the water was slower and the shoreline not as steep. Jack pulled out the make-shift fishing rod and tied a thin, high-test line around one end. He set a barbed hook in the other.

Daniel watched him, frowning. "Where'd that come from?"

"Field kit. The string was a good idea, though."

Daniel frowned harder.

"And I really appreciated the thought."

"There's probably nothing to bait it with," Daniel said.

Jack pulled out a small, bright green lure and tied it off. He looked up at Daniel and smiled tentatively. "Fish for lunch?"

There actually were fish in the river; it made the landscape seem a little more welcoming. Less like a planet-sized memorial to past occupants. There were small perch-like fish, and some bigger trout-like fish, and one thing that had both gills and legs. Jack let them all go; catch and release was the path of wisdom for alien species, as long as nobody was starving. When he'd fished as long as his spirit needed, he looked back and found Daniel crashed out on the grass behind him, glasses slipping off his face, a journal of Applied Linguistics draped across his chest. His mouth was open and his breath was wheezing faintly through it. Jack wondered for a second if Daniel's antihistamine stash had gone through on the MALP.

He looked peaceful. He looked like the textbook definition of peaceful.  
The sun was only halfway across the sky, and the afternoon was looking considerably warmer than the morning had been. And it wasn't like they had anyplace to be. Jack moved his pack closer to Daniel as quietly as he could, and settled against it to look up at the sky. There were clouds in the east, but they were friendly and thin and harmless. He leaned back and tipped his hat forward to shadow his eyes, cradling his P-90 lovingly in his arms.

Daniel's hand on his shoulder woke him later; Jack lowered his weapon  
before he even knew he'd raised it, and blinked up into Daniel's face.

"Time to go," Daniel said, smiling down at him. "I let you sleep a while."

"You let _me_ sleep?" Jack said, staring. But he grabbed the hand that was offered to him, and let himself be pulled to his feet. "How long were we out?"

"Not long. Couple of hours. There's plenty of light left to get back to camp."

"I'm never going to get to sleep tonight. I don't nap well."

Daniel's eyebrows lifted. "You looked like a pro, from where I was sitting."

"Where you were snoring, you mean." Jack grabbed his pack from the ground, then hunted around for his fishing gear.

"Right here." Daniel handed him the pole. "Ready?"

Jack looked around. They had everything. The clouds off to the east were looking a little less friendly, but the day wasn't as old as it could have been, all things considered. They probably had some time. "You sure you don't want to go a little further south?"

"Mostly I just wanted to hang out by the water." Daniel smiled at him, squinting a little in the light from the afternoon sun. "It was a good day."

There was a question somewhere in that. Jack looked a little closer, tilting his head. Something clicked, the wide open look in Daniel's eyes and the lazy afternoon of nothing. "Hey," he said, startled. "All of this was for me?"

Daniel shrugged, and hitched his pack up higher on his shoulders. "You got to sit around doing nothing. I got to fiddle with obscure languages." He smiled again, quick and weirdly sweet. "Felt kind of like being on leave, to me."

Jack took a step toward Daniel. He'd taken two more before he realized what he was doing and stopped himself, holding himself still and quiet.

Daniel watched him, and didn't look away when Jack did; Jack knew because when his eyes went helplessly back, Daniel was still watching.

"Jack?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah," he said. His own voice, thick and low, woke him up and gave him a chance to step away. "Yeah," he said more firmly, and didn't know where to go from there.

"It was a good day," Daniel said, coming up beside him. "Wasn't it?"

"It was a good day." Jack risked one glance over; Daniel's mouth was crooked up at one corner, his eyes blue and bright, and Jack _wanted_ him, a sudden deep pull in his gut that he was sure would show somehow on his face, sure Daniel couldn't possibly miss. He wanted to touch Daniel's face, his mouth.

"We should go then," Daniel said. He took a quick, stuttered breath. "We should... probably go right now."

"Yeah," Jack said again, not moving. "We should go."

Daniel shifted away. Then he stepped away. Then he started to walk. Jack had to move fast to catch up, by the time he could move. He was careful not to walk too close, not to brush against Daniel's hand or his sleeve.

"It really was a good day," Jack said a while later, when he trusted himself again. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Daniel was squinting into the sun again. Jack was sure he had prescription shades somewhere, but he never wore them, even when they weren't stranded alone with half their gear. The burn from the first day had faded into a tan, and --

"Hey," Jack said. "Are you...you're doing a different thing with your hair."

"What? Oh..." Daniel ran a hand through his hair, frowning. "I guess. I just... so?"

"You never really struck me as the kind of guy who, you know. Paid a lot of attention to his hair."

Daniel frowned even harder. "Thanks."

"No, I just mean --"

"You never really struck me as the kind of guy who pays a lot of attention to other guys' hair."

"I'm profoundly interested in my team."

"You didn't say anything when Sam changed her hair."

Jack blinked. "Carter changed her hair?"

Daniel's eyes narrowed. "Profoundly interested," he said.

"Hey," Jack said, "look, some more grass," and picked up his pace just a little. He heard a muffled laugh behind him, and grinned.

They picked up their own trail as they closed on the stargate, scuffed and flattened grass starting to form a path. Jack's steps lightened; maybe not hearth and home, exactly, but not really that far off the mark. The remains of the fire greeted them; soon they'd need to find more wood. Daniel opened his pack and started to make camp; Jack joined him, working in silence until everything was in place. Daniel started the fire and opened another MRE. Jack's stomach growled loudly in the quiet; Daniel looked up, startled, and grinned. He sat down beside Jack and offered him the package first.

"We can still go south tomorrow, if you want to," Jack said when they were done. "See what's out there."

"Thanks." Awkwardly, Daniel put a hand on Jack's shoulder and squeezed, not meeting Jack's eyes. "North is more interesting, though."

"We've been north."

"Not all the way."

Jack glanced over at Daniel sideways, smiling. "You want us to go to the North _Pole?_ "

"No," Daniel said firmly. "Just...further than we've been so far."

Jack's eyes widened. "Works for me." he said, and if he was a little warm and out of breath, it was clearly from all the walking and the fire.

  


  


* * *

  


  


They didn't hike north along the river the next day. Steel grey clouds blanketed the sky when they woke, late because the morning never grew brighter than twilight. Wind whipped at their blankets and supplies, and scattered burning embers from the fire. They set the tarp between the stargate and the Hammer and bundled themselves inside it, knee to knee, their packs and their body weight holding down the flaps. Daniel dug out a flashlight and flicked it on, wedging it between his leg and his pack.

"Now I'm starting to miss my TV," Jack said.

"I just miss our tent. If we had the tent, we could at least read or play cards."

"If we had cards," Jack said, and Daniel nodded.

The rain and wind pulled the temperature down fast; after half an hour they were chilled, and half an hour after that, they were shivering. Huddling close to Daniel for warmth was more embarrassing than fun, Jack discovered, and not particularly effective anyway. The wind cut through everything they couldn't seal. Daniel tried holding his own fingers to warm them, which only ever worked for so long. Jack reached out and took Daniel's hands, staring resolutely at nothing, and rubbed them roughly between his own. After a few minutes, Jack let go and Daniel pulled his hands back.

"Thanks," Daniel said.

"Don't mention it."

"It helped."

"Really," Jack said, fighting to keep the strain out of his voice. "Don't mention it."

Daniel blinked once. "Ah."

After a while, the only protection the tarp offered was from physical abuse by the downpour. As far as Jack could tell, it had been raining for something like years. The wind died down, which he hoped meant the storm would be passing soon, but the rain kept falling and creeping in under the edges of their not-quite tent. Jack hated every second they'd spent goofing off and not building a solid, leak-proof shelter, and every second squished uselessly against Daniel even more.

"That's it," Jack said. "I no longer remember a time when it wasn't raining. I vote we get out of here and see if we can find some shelter. We haven't gone west yet, maybe there are cliffs. Cliffs with caves, how about that, Daniel? Doesn't that sound better than this?"

"Jack, it's only been two hours."

"It's been forever. Continents have shifted, Daniel, civilizations have fallen. We're wet and frozen and _now_ you don't care what's behind the next ridge?"

Daniel pushed up his glasses and looked at Jack with compassion. "There aren't any ridges."

"I bet we could find some," was what Jack meant to say, but what he actually said was, _"Colonel O'Neill, this is Major Carter, do you read?"_

Daniel's eyes widened. "I didn't even see your lips move," he said, while  
Jack fumbled in his jacket for the radio.

"Carter, this is O'Neill. Where the hell have you been?"

 _"Sorry, sir. We couldn't get back through the gate, and it took a little time to round up a ship. Is Daniel with you?"_

"Right here, Sam," Daniel said into his own radio. "Love to chat, but could we possibly do it in person? I can't feel my fingers."

One flap of the tarp peeled up. "No problem," Carter said, peering in at them with a bright, welcoming smile. "You guys want to wait till it stops raining, or share my umbrella?"

  


  


* * *

  


  


Jack had never been happier to see Carter or Teal'c. He hugged them both, soaking them to the skin and possibly lowering himself somewhat in Teal'c regard. He balked at hugging Narim, who came back from the cockpit to greet them, or Hairy, who trailed along greenly behind.

"Towels," he said to Carter, stripping off his jacket, "and report." Daniel was way ahead of him; he was down to his t-shirt and boxers, rooting around in his pack for something dry.

Narim actually got the towels, big fluffy white ones that shimmered in a disturbingly festive fashion. Jack didn't complain. In fact, he was reconsidering holding back that hug. Water practically leapt off his body and dove into the fabric, drying him head to toe in minutes. He stripped all the way down and tucked the towel close around his waist; when he turned, he saw that Daniel had done the same.

Carter hadn't started talking yet. He looked up to find out why, and caught her looking back and forth between the two of them, biting her lip. His eyes narrowed in what he hoped was a dangerous manner. "Carter?"

She shrugged helplessly, and started to grin. "Sorry, sir. I was just thinking you guys would make a nice calendar."

Jack leveled a finger at her. "That's insubordination, Carter. I'm putting that in my report."

"Can I get you two something to wear, sir?" she asked innocently. Her eyes cut between them again, at chest level. "You both look a little...chilled."

" _Report_ , Major. While you still are one?"

"Yes, sir. When we realized the gate had malfunctioned, we tried to dial back through with no success. Under the circumstances, it seemed likely that our corrections to the DHD had created a short when they failed. Given the timing of the gate failure, we figured you were either stranded on the other side of it, or dead." She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. "We hoped for the former, of course."

"Of course," Jack said, glaring. "Continue."

"While Narim delivered the medications and first aid supplies we'd brought with us, Teal'c and I acquired a Goa'uld cargo ship and brought it here to resc -- to pick you up, sir. I had to tinker around under the hood a little to speed things up, but that was more fun than anything else." Carter smiled, her eyes crinkling up. "And here we are! I'm glad you guys are okay. Teal'c and I had a bet on how long it would take you to kill each other."

"Major Carter explained to me the history of your Donner Party," Teal'c said, and Carter had the grace to blush.

"Thank you," Jack said, looking back and forth between them. "That's really sweet. But since I wasn't born _yesterday_ , I'd appreciate it if you'd go over the acquisition part of that story in a little more detail."

"I knew of a world where Apophis would often send his damaged craft for repair and service," Teal'c said smoothly. "We acquired the tel'tac from that world."

"So," Daniel said. "When you say acquired, what you really mean is --"

"We stole it," Carter said proudly. "Didn't we, Teal'c." She nudged him with her elbow, grinning.

Teal'c looked down at her. "We did indeed, Major Carter," he said warmly.

"It seemed the only way to retrieve you, Colonel O'Neill," Narim said. "Our ships were too badly damaged in our escape; those of us who survived had to abandon them almost immediately. I regret the hardships you've both endured as a result of your generosity in aiding my people."

"You're not the only one," Jack muttered.

"We were fine." Daniel stepped smoothly between Jack and Narim, and ended up getting the first set of shiny white clothes. He dropped his towel, pulled a shiny white tunic-thing over his head, and _shimmied_ into the shiny white trousers. Jack tore his eyes away way too late to be anything but conspicuous, but he was a split second faster than Carter and that was all that really mattered.

He grabbed the other set of Tollan gear and put it on, determinedly not looking to see if Daniel was looking. "How's the rescue effort going?" he asked Narim from deep within the tunic.

"Very well." When Jack poked his head out through the collar, Narim was wearing a small, satisfied smile. "Your assistance has been most welcome. Pirelin's people have sheltered us and hidden us, but our biological differences made medical assistance impossible for all but the most superficial wounds."

Daniel's ears perked up. "Pirelin?"

Hairy stepped forward, turned purple, and made a low, pleasant sound.

"Pirelin," Narim said. "This is Daniel."

"Hi, Daniel!" Hairy said, and smiled.

Daniel's eyes widened till Jack worried they'd fall out. "Uh...hi," he said, blinking. "Nice to meet you, Pirelin."

"Hi, Daniel!" Pirelin said. "Hi!"

Carter grinned at Daniel. "That's all we've taught him to say so far. You were right, Daniel, the motions and the colors aren't enough to form a language on their own. Pirilen's people are empaths, at least with each other. The sounds and the colors are used for emphasis and elaboration; most of their communication is on a level we can't see or hear."

"Empaths," Daniel said slowly.

"We communicate with them primarily through their children," Narim said. "Their empathic abilities manifest themselves at puberty, at which point they usually stop vocalizing. As children they speak a very basic, changeable language, different for almost every generation. By adulthood, their communication is almost entirely non-verbal."

"Can he understand us?"

"Not very well, I'm afraid. Pirelin understands more than most of his people; he's served as a kind of ambassador to the Tollan for longer than any of us have been alive. His exposure has taught him to read our body language and intonations better than most of his kind can."

"So... the colors don't really mean anything," Daniel said. His shoulders slumped. "That's... kind of annoying, actually."

Hairy -- Pirelin -- leaned in close to Daniel and turned bright pink.

"No, look," Carter said, "he likes you. He changes colors when he feels different things. The more colors he changes, the more interested he is."

"Carter," Jack said slowly, "are you seriously telling me this thing is a _mood_ alien?"

Pirelin made a high, whistling sound and turned yellow.

"See, Colonel?" Carter looked at Jack and grinned. "He likes you, too."

"Peachy. I'm all about interstellar goodwill. In fact, now that we've created so much of it, I'm dying to go home and tell General Hammond all about it. Unless you have some objection?"

With an obvious effort, Carter pulled herself back to something close to attention. "None, sir. We can head back to the Tollan's base camp now, if everything's secure."

Jack looked around at their sodden packs and piles of soaked clothes, at their useless tarp and fishing pole. It all looked a little sad, surrounded by gleaming gold leaf and clean, shining faces. A tug in his chest surprised him; he was going to miss it. Everything, rain and mud included.

Then he looked at Daniel, and the tug got stronger. Daniel was looking back, a faint smile on his lips. "I have everything I need," Daniel said. "Let's go home."

"Home sounds good," Carter said. "Teal'c, you want to do the honors?"

"With pleasure."

"Wait," Jack said. He hadn't taken his eyes off Daniel, and now he started to smile. "There's one thing I want to do, before we go."

  


  


* * *

  


  


The city was vast, a long white stretch of stone and glass along the river. Empty black streets wound between tall, turreted buildings and wide green parkways. Three bridges spanned the river, leading to more black roads that spooled out toward the horizon. It was silent and still, wet from the rain storm and glistening in the sun that came after.

Daniel leaned forward, looking over Teal'c/s shoulder. "I want to come back here," he said quietly, eyes shining. "I want to know what happened here." He turned that look on Jack, and Christ, it nearly knocked him off his feet.

Jack looked back at Daniel. His eyes were probably shining, too. Any skill he'd had at hiding it, he'd left somewhere by the river down below.

  


.end


End file.
